


A Lacking in Plastic

by angelgazing



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-24
Updated: 2010-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-07 12:59:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelgazing/pseuds/angelgazing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They don't talk to her and everyone misses what's missing. Set after Serenity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lacking in Plastic

They don't talk to her. Their mouths don't move and their eyes don't follow her and they don't whisper things to her when she's staring out the window, sitting in his seat.

She holds the controls like he did, the way she'd seen him do it when she snuck in late late, when she was supposed to be sleeping and it was him and them and the ship and the stars. It's not the same though, not really, because her hands don't fit right, and Serenity knows the difference. She can feel her brow furrow in frustration and they sit beside her silently, watching.

They don't talk to her. That's important.

"Don't," she says, when Simon reaches out to touch one. He pulls his hand back and doesn't question—spend enough time with a crazy person and you stop questioning—spend enough time with River and they all stop questioning, but she tries to explain anyway. "They're not ready yet."

He just thinks she's still crazy.

\---

Whenever she has to be on the bridge, Zoe plays with the necklace she still wears. Her eyes don't give anything away, and her face doesn't either. Nothing does except for the way she keeps looking over at River. Like River is a traitor, an impostor, like River is the one on this ship who robbed graves.

The necklace is a symbol. Everything here is. Serenity shakes sometimes because she misses him too, and it's the one thing River can't make herself say.

"Think there's a singing snowman's chance in hell of us getting to the drop point somewhere that's even approaching on time?" Mal asks sharply, just shy of angry, because he was raised by his mother on a ranch, around skittish horses and angry bulls and he knows when it's best not to make eye contact. He's never learned when to back down though, and that's going to be the thing that kills all of them one day. Picks them off one by one like berries on a vine, the way Kaylee's right to fear.

"You aren't nice," River says, and flips the switches _he_ always used to when the captain was in this mood. She knows the real name, knows what the books would call them and what Kaylee would call them, but she doesn't know what _she_ should call them. They're the-switches-Wash-flipped-to-make-the-captain-happy, and it's just a little bit of extra speed, but it mostly does the trick. "Won't matter if we're on time or not, you're just going to end up shooting at them."

"You know that for certain? With your… crazy reader mojo?"

River pulls her eyes from the-switches-Wash-flipped-to-make-the-captain-not-yell-anymore to glance at him over her shoulder. "Statistical fact. You always end up shooting at them."

"Always is being a _little bit_ harsh, don't you think?" Mal asks, oblivious when it suits him to be. "Ain't had crew 'cept Jayne so much as grazed in weeks."

Zoe steels her jaw, keeps her eyes focused outside to watch the sky for a while instead, and her fingers curl _tight_ around the end of the leather she wears around her neck. She thinks his name _loudly_, like a cry, like a hurt, and it makes River shake with the ship. It echoes in her head, and no one else notices at all but River and them.

They don't have anything to say, but they _understand_ like the others can't. He went away and they lost their voices.

\---

_Baby, baby, baby,_ is how Zoe cries, and River and Serenity are the only ones who can hear her, gasping back sobs that sound like _baby_ and like _Wash_. She curls around herself on the bed they shared, late at night when it used to be just them, when he's supposed to be beside her and isn't and she misses him the most, and her tears stain his pillow.

River's got her feet flat against the floor and her head cocked and Zoe cries, curled around herself, around things of his that are losing the meaning he gave them, the back of one hand against her mouth to try and keep quiet and the palm of the other pressed against the place where she's empty with what he wouldn't give her. She cries like _baby, baby, baby,_ like _please, please, Wash, baby, please,_ and it vibrates through everything because Serenity cries with her.

She cries and Serenity cries and River shakes and knows. _Knows_. Because she's not Zoe now: she's a mess, she's a girl, she's lonely. She's not Zoe anymore; she's empty.

River turns her head just a little, turns her eyes toward them, and nods. They still understand better than the others. They lost their names too.

\---

Most of them were only toys, hiding out in the plastic trees waiting. Most of them were just backdrop, they didn't have names or voices or histories to lose. They were toys, and they did what all forgotten toys did, and sat there.

The others, the two, they were enemies once. They were friends. One would turn to the other and say with the voice he loaned them, "On Earth-That-Was you were Hunter." And the other would reply with as much of a snarl as a plastic mouth allows, "On Earth-That-Was you were _food_." Then the first one would sound horror-stricken when he said, "Curses and curses, I fell for it again," just before he became food again.

The tall one never liked his name, never liked any of them. And he doesn't think of himself as the tall one, or the mean one, or the orange one. He thinks of himself as I. He thinks, I don't know why I always play the same part; my teeth are no sharper than his. And River whispers quietly, "Dull from years of use." And he stops thinking because he's not amused and he's missing what made him not a toy and she's not supposed to talk to them. It isn't allowed.

\---

Kaylee brushes nervous fingers against buttons she's not to be pressing. It's just a caress, and her fingers tremble when she does it. They're not her buttons to push, but they aren't River's or the captain's either. Serenity still whines when they touch them and it isn't like he did it.

"Do you think," Kaylee asks her quietly, so quietly River can barely hear her over the sigh that Serenity gives when her fingers are pulled away by something that's missing.

"Yes," River tells her, and watches the sky with her hands fitting ghost like on the helm in that way that's not-right, like it but not. Just different enough to make it more wrong, to make it more painful for them all.

There are questions that are loud in Kaylee, and River doesn't want to hear them anymore. She can't answer the why or how or if it could've been something other. Something better, maybe. And the questions she has are so _loud_ that they make River's head hurt.

"It's not," she says, and hopes she doesn't sound as desperate as they think she does. "He loved her and now she's lonely cause no one else can love her the same. He's gone and she's forgotten how to be her. He mopped her brow once, you know, that's how he loved her. There's no coming back from that."

"Then why's she still here?"

"No where else to be. Serenity is home. It's got parts he built and parts he held and parts he _was_." She watches as Kaylee picks one of them up, not one of _them_, one of the toys, one of the background. That one's not the one who's hurting. "They're alike that way—Zoe and Serenity—they were both his wife and they should mourn together. It's only right."

\---

"They attacking with dinosaurs, again?" Simon asks, trying to sneak up behind her while she's watching them. He tries to throw her off with memories that get tangled up inside of her with those that aren't hers sometimes. He tries a lot of things.

"They're plastic," she tells him, because he's not a dummy but it's fun to pretend he is when he does dumb things. "They haven't the power to attack."

"Of course, how silly of me."

She makes faces at them, and then at Simon again, because he doesn't understand. "They're plastic," she repeats, "and it's not enough."

\---

The other one resents being other. He doesn't remember any of his names though. He remembers being food, remembers being king, remembers finding lands and founding laws and being better than the new ones.

He's got spikes along his back, on his tail, and he was the soft one for _him_. For when he needed one of them to be. He's not other, because they're the same.

They watched the sky outside his window, when there was nothing to see but smog and smoke and thickness. Watched him wonder if the stars were all they were meant to be. The other one isn't other, because it was always them, they were always three. They watched him dream, and grow and learn. They watched as his friends set down their toys and forgot who they were and they became more than toys, they became more than plastic when they'd stomp over books of the galaxy to say, "I claim this pretty piece of land as my own, for my own."

He bumped their chins with his knuckles and told them they'd have to be lucky, and the first time he went up they went with him, reaching past to see the smog. They watched, that first time, as he realized it was _worth it_. They watched as he fell in love and they went with him.

It's what made them more. It's what makes this hard. They're just toys that weren't forgotten because he never walked away before. They don't know how to be forgotten. They don't know how to be left. They don't know how to be plastic now that everything else they were was lost when he was.

(And they were there too, when he was gone they were there and they screamed his name just the same as she did.)

He remembers what hands feel like, and when River picks him up it's _wrong_. It's the wrong feeling and he yowls like babies do when they're being forced out of the only place they've known, and it echoes through River the way that Serenity's crying does. Trembles from her fingertips to her toes. "It's okay," she tells him softly, and puts him down next to his enemy/friend. Next to the one who knows.

\---

Serenity bucks when Mal takes her, like a horse trying to throw him off. She doesn't like the way he holds her, too straight, nose pointed where he wants to be.

"Why's she always do that to me?" he asks, and River wonders if it's because he knows she's got the answer.

"You don't love her right," River says, and sways forward onto her toes with the urge to take her back from him. "You love the freedom, you love the ship, you love the flying, but you don't love the flight. She got used to having one that did, she got used to caring more about getting there than where there was. She likes being in the sky; it's what she was made for. She likes the stars and the quiet and the _space_.

"Plus," she adds, as an after thought, "she liked the way he held her. He used to dance with her and she misses it. She's afraid she'll forget how."

\---

"You moved them," Zoe says, and it's the first thing she's said to River since River started not liking to leave the bridge and trying to fill the gaps of the helm where his fingers held tight. "You moved them," she repeats, and her voice quakes with a hundred different things.

"They shouldn't be alone." River pulls her feet up into the chair with her, because Serenity is making noises that rattle through her again. And can't let her teeth shake now. "They don't know how to be alone."

"River, honey, Wash always—"

"He was _here_ then," she says, and sounds desperate enough that they pay attention to her and not to the way Zoe's got her fingers wrapped around the necklace that meant commitment. "They were three and now they're two. They shouldn't have to be one yet. They're just plastic now and you're afraid of being it too and wishing that you were, but they're hurting too. They were with him when he was three and when he was flying and when he was loving you more than them and Serenity and everything else. No one else can _see_, but they're mourning, just like Serenity is, just like you are and it's not fair to make them do it alone. He's not here anymore and all they are is lonely."

Zoe takes a breath that's deepdeep_deep_ like she thinks the air can fill up the places where there's nothing anymore. Like it'll fill her the way it does a balloon, until she's full up and floating. Her fingers are doing a thing where she's trembling and it's not right, she shouldn't have to do that. She shouldn't _feel_ like this, and River shouldn't be suffocating in it. But then the air all goes out of her and she just kind of deflates and River has to tell her, "They lost their names, but they're still dinosaurs, they've just forgotten how to be that without him. They just need to remind each other, that's all."

"Okay," Zoe says, and laughs shaky and doesn't understand much at all. "Okay."

"No. It's not." River looks out, at the stars, because they're all _not talking_ and the only thing worse than hearing everything is hearing _nothing_. Just that silence of Miranda, echoing and echoing and echoing and they all watch her and Simon thinks her name loudly sometimes, like she's gone away too. "We're just ghosts now," she whispers, into the sharp part of her knee. "That's all. We're just ghosts who don't know it yet, and I don't know who made us that way. But it's not okay. It's _not_."


End file.
